Rick Hurst, the actor known for playing Deputy Cletus Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard, has died. He was 79.
According to the actor’s wife Candace Kaniecki, he died unexpectedly on Thursday in Los Angeles, TMZ reported. His cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
Hurst’s co-star Ben Jones, who played Cooter Davenport on the 1979-’85 CBS sitcom, announced his death on Facebook after Hurst was scheduled to appear at Cooter’s Place in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee next month.
“It doesn’t seem right that Rick Hurst passed away this afternoon. When something so unexpected happens, it is ‘harder to process,’ as the current expression goes,” he said in a statement. “I have known Rick for over 45 years and there wasn’t a minute of that time that he didn’t leave me smiling or laughing. Sure he was a professional comedian, but mostly he just had a heart as big as Texas. He was a fine actor, a splendid comic, and a wonderfully supportive colleague. I had seen him in a Burt Reynolds movie called W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings and thought that he ‘stole the show,’ so when he showed up in Hazzard County during the time when Sonny Shroyer was doing the series Enos, everything clicked. He fit right in and never stopped making people smile until this afternoon.”
Jones continued, “And since the Dukes is still playing all over the planet, he will continue to make us laugh! I don’t know about y’all but I believe in an afterlife, and I can see Rick up there in Heaven with Jimmy Best and Sorrell Booke and Denver Pyle, putting on the funniest show inside those Pearly Gates. We have always thought of our Cooter’s friends as ‘Hazzard Nation’, Well, Hazzard Nation is sure going to miss Rick Hurst down here around Cooter’s, but his presence will always be near us. Rest in Peace, old friend!”
Rick Hurst, John Schneider, Catherine Bach, Ben Jones and Tom Wopat in ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ (1979-’85)
Born Jan. 1, 1946 in Houston, Hurst had several TV roles on Sanford and Son, The Partridge Family, Gunsmoke, Happy Days, Little House on the Prairie, The Six Million Dollar Man and M*A*S*H throughout the ’70s before landing the part of Boss Hogg’s cousin on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Hurst has also appeared in shows like Murder She Wrote, 227, The Wonder Years, Family Matters and Melrose Place, as well as movies like Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), The Karate Kid Part III (1989), Steel Magnolias (1989), Anywhere But Here (1999).